Dec 19, 2010

Almost Christmas

It's time to leave the village for the Christmas holidays - if, indeed, we will manage to leave, snow and all. This will probably be the last time I'll get to post in 2010...which hasn't been a great year for blogging, but a very busy and productive year for pretty much everything else.
Have a happy holiday period, y'all, and a very happy 2011! I'm looking forward to reading your blogs, looking at your photos, and also to seeing some of you in the new year.

Dec 18, 2010

Snowed in again

I thought it would pass us by, but just as we're about to travel the snow has come for a visit.
When I woke up at 8am all was fine, so I turned around for another hour or so of sleep and when I woke up again there were a couple of inches of snow. We just about managed to drive the car out of the village (which has a steep hill on each approach) so as not to get completely stuck, like in January. We had a great cartoon-moment near the top of the hill, though, when the tyres weren't gripping at all any more, the car had almost come to a standstill whilst revving loudly, and we thought we'd be sliding backwards into the abyss any second. Magically we made it up to the crest nevertheless.
The birds were looking quite cheesed off all day and the food I put out for them kept disappearing under the snowflakes



but young Toby, our neighbour, has a smart winter coat (matching his owners) and was as keen as ever:


Dec 16, 2010

Indecision

People sometimes ask if I have a webpage for my photos, and I seldom give them my blog address because I don't want them to have to scroll through all the text that comes with them. On the other hand I also often find it pointless to post photos without words, and so all in all I find it difficult to make up my mind as to which format the blog should really have. And then it dawned on me (ha!)some days ago that, really, I can have just two blogs - one that works as a portfolio, and one in which I'm allowed to ramble if I so wish. Don't know why that took so long.
Anyhoo - here is the new photo-only blog:
http://luminousobjectives.blogspot.com/

Dec 13, 2010

Light - which light??

A lot of people state that good photography is all about light. I don't think whoever came up with this first ever lived in England. And if you are a small-time photographer like me, and you have a day job, and a nighttime job to boot, you might not have a chance to get any decent light-situation during the dreary weeks of English winter.
My local microclimate is particularly mean. At sunrise - which at the moment is around 8am - the sky is usually clear, but by the time I have had my breakfast a major cloudbank is greying everything over. I don't always have the time to go out during that precious hour and at the weekends I do like to sleep in, so I often have the choice to either take photos in flat light or to take none.

Yesterday was a day of exceptionally uninspiring light. Before we headed out for some fresh air I decided to take my Eos 7D (whose autofocus in low light conditions is far superior to the 5D Mark II) and my 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens which is - well - good for macros but also generally sharp and clear in low light conditions. I got the most peculiar results. Making the photos smaller for the web has of course enhanced the grunge-factor, but even then the originals look more like paintings than photos (and that's not because I forgot my glasses at home):








This morning, though, I snuck out before breakfast: